


The stars in your eyes

by imsfire



Series: Rebelcaptain appreciation week 2019 [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: A child's daydreams and the things they wonder about, A child's eye view of the world, Fluff, Fun, Games, Gen, I have a lot of feels for that little post-war colony on Yavin 4, Post-War setting, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, family love, happiness, the little things in life, v slight background angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 19:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18394652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: In the little colony on Yavin 4, after the war, Jyn and Cassian's son is growing up and learning about the world.





	The stars in your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> For Day one prompt "Stardust". Because I can headcanon Jyn reclaiming the childhood pet-name to use for her own children.

Esper loves a lot of things.  There are a lot of things to love.  The world gets bigger and more beautiful all the time, and more cool.  And now he’s grown up a whole year more and he’s so much taller, he can see so much further; and everywhere, there’s just more things to love and learn about and get excited by.

Birds, bugs, creepy-legs, happy worms.  Long-legged frogs and no-legs swimmers.  He loves the jumping amphibians that crowd the pools along the little stream, and the big slow ones that hide in the shallows of the big stream.  He loves the snorty warty sea-lizards too, basking on their rocks above the waves and blowing out salt water at him.  Some of them have long feelers under their noses, that look like Uncle Rex’s moustache.

They dive in when Esperanz and his friends come too close.  He loves to watch them swimming away, dark bodies gleaming in the clear water.

He loves the sand lizards too, with their knobbly backs, and the house lizards whose feet end in suckers like a Rodian’s fingertips.  The lizards of Yavin 4 are beautiful and very cool.

He loves to run, and having a swingie, and playing futbol and smashbol, with Mama and Papa or with the other kids in the town.  Next year maybe, when he’s grown up even bigger, he might get to play in the school team, with the really big kids like Poe Dameron and Elpida Gades, and Gobaitha Morró.  Esper wants to be Goby Morró when he’s really, really grown up, because Goby is going to be a scientist and solve problems for all the galaxy.

That’s if he doesn’t become a historian like Papa.  Historians make sure the problems we’ve already solved don’t get forgotten, and that’s important too.

But maybe he wants to be a health officer, and help Mama with the medicining things, and help the sick people get better and the people with broken bones get their bone-set shots in the right place.  He’ll measure his friends and see how much they’ve grown, and give the pregnant ladies their vitamins and their iron-fruit juice.

Or maybe he’ll be a swimming champion.  He loves splashing in the little stream and learning to swim in the big one.  When he’s big, he’ll go swimming and surfing in the sea too, like Mama and Papa and Poe’s papa.  If he ever falls off a boat he’ll be able to swim to shore, safe and sound.

He loves watching the fishing boats, when they’re bobbing in the harbour, and when they sail out and come back.  The _Victory Runner_ , the _Cody’s Joy_ , the _Mariposa Elena_ and the _Reina Breha_.  All their solar sails have coloured pictures on them, abstract patterns and designs of dancing flowers and waving sea-weeds, of shooting stars and flying fish.  

He loves watching the stars at night, sitting on the patio with Papa naming the constellations, and the white veil of the galaxy falling soft across the high places of the sky.  He loves the sound of the night bugs singing quietly, and the feeling that it’s just him and Papa out all alone, so late at night, long after dark, under the stars.

He loves it when Papa calls him _Estrellita_ , and Mama calls him My stardust, my star.

Mama calls him My sparkle, too, and My little bantha bull-calf, and sometimes Sweet picklepie. 

Papa calls him _Manzanita_ and _Rosita,_ _Nene_ and _Mijo_ and _Mi luz_ and _Mi corazon_.  He loves all the names they give him, all the names that mean they love him.

He has bits of stars in his eyes.  He thinks.  Mama says he has his father’s eyes, but with her stardust in them.  Esper’s eyes are dark, like Papa’s, he’s seen them in the reflector-glass when he’s brushing his teeth, and they have sparkles in them, like Mama’s; so sparkles must be stardust and that’s why he’s their Sparkle and their Stardust, their _Estrellita, Lucecita, Mi luz, Mi amor._

But stardust is also something everyone has, something that everyone was once, and everyone is going to be.  It’s rather confusing.

His _abuelos_ are stardust now.  Lots of people’s are.  More than half the families in the little port town come from places that don’t exist anymore, which is very sad and very strange to think about.  Places on a planet called Alderaan, whose name is spoken differently to all the others.  Almost everyone’s _abuelos_ died there.

But Papa says “We’re all made of star stuff, _nene_ ; when people die their bodies go back to stardust again.  But there’s a bit of your grandparents’ star stuff in you now, so they’re not completely dead.”

Star stuff is stardust, everyone knows that.  He isn’t quite sure how the rest of the story joins up, except that Mama’s papa also had sparkly bits in his eyes.  So maybe it’s _his_ stardust that Esper has inside him.

But there might be a bit of any other one of the stars in him too.  Maybe one day Goby can solve that problem. 

Maybe one day he’ll solve it himself.  If he can’t be a scientist like Goby Morró, or a medic like Mama, Esperanz Andor-Erso wants to be a pilot.  Just like Uncle Bodhi, or like Papa and Uncle Kay when they go to conferences.

“Give me a shoulder-ride, please, Papa?  Then I can be closer to the stars.”

Cassian lifts up his son, and kisses his hair as he swings him into the air.


End file.
